Rain Again
by Sticksy
Summary: A tragedy and the emotional aftermath. HanLeia. Just a short piece where Leia deals with an unexpected disaster.


Warmth caressed her ear, tickling her subconscious as she tried to drift to sleep. She lifted a hand to swat at the source.

"Leia?"

"She's not here," Leia mumbled to her pillow.

A kiss where the warmth of his breath had just been.

"She's still not here," Leia re-affirmed.

One gentle hand skipped over her body.

/touching/

/massaging/

/loving/

Fingertips alighted on her breast, light as air, moving just the way he knew she liked.

"How about now?" Han teased.

"No. Leave a message and she'll get back to you when she hasn't been awake for over two days."

Starting to lose the dull softness of sleep, she reached out to brush his Force sense hoping to infuse of bit of her own exhaustion into him. The same tiredness plaguing her was present but tinged with his typical edge of arousal.

Now? Sith, they'd been up to their elbows in death for two days and he somehow was capable of wanting sex?

Kisses beat a gentle rainstorm down her neck. All it did was lull her deeper into a restful state.

Positively peaceful.

Han had been the one to receive the comm call.

At the edge of her mind, she heard sirens, panic, chaosconfusiondespairpain-

_"Solo," Han muttered to his comm while continuing his shirtless advance towards Leia. She shook her head, mouthed 'no' and gestured to the comm._

_"Hey, Han," Wedge Antilles' voice filtered through the comm. _

_"Is this important, Antilles? I'm busy."_

_"Um, well something happened."_

Leia stared at the transparisteel window nestled next to Han's bunk. Their bunk. Late at night, it became his bunk. When she got in and when she left, it was theirs. While she slept cradled in the comfort of Them, it was his bunk. She promised herself that when she had time, she would figure out this flaw with her logical thought processes.

"Where'd you go just now, Sweetheart?" He whispered, as he always did when he didn't want to intrude on her thoughts.

"Nowhere."

One hand reached out and touched the controls for the window. Lines of starlight immediately took the place of the darkness Han had set it for when they had, at last, laid down for sleep.

Concern.

"You okay?"

"Am I ever?" she returned easily.

She felt his forehead come to rest on the back of her head and it occurred to her that he was struggling to find the words to comfort her.

Carefully, she turned in his arms. "Want to play Dejarik?"

Expectedly, his face turned sour. "Now?"

"I can't sleep anymore."

"There are other things we could do," he returned hopefully. To emphasize his point, his hands took liberties with her body that she normally permitted.

This time, she caught his grip in her own and then looked down at the hands clasped in her own.

_Leia felt the small, sweaty hand slipping from her grasp. There was no way to reach in the tiny hold in the hot steel to get a better grip on the arm that had snaked its way up the twisted hulk of the building to reach for help._

_"Hold on!" she demanded to the faceless being buried in the rubble._

_Han had gotten the comm call but they'd both responded. How could they not? It was in their blood, this irrational urge to save the entire galaxy even when they least wanted to._

_"It hurts," shook the voice belonging to the hand. Leia guessed human and no more than 10 or 11 standard years old. Innocence radiated from the presence. _

_"I know. I know it hurts. Just hold on to me. We'll get you out of there."_

_Through the Force, a dimness encroached upon the bright spot was the child she held in her hand. _

_Fading fast. _

_Luke would have easily been able to move the beams and steel with the Force. Han probably had the strength to lift it with using his own power. Leia, though, was neither a Jedi nor a man. Her physical strength, though impressive, was nowhere near enough to do more than shift things around. _

_"OVER HERE!" Frantically, she used her other arm to gesture down at the one rescue crew worker who had finally picked his way around to her area of the wreckage._

_His head popped up and saw her hope. Heedless of the danger, he quickly picked his way over and around various heaps of debris. _

_"He's alive!" Leia called. She recognized the young man trying to reach her as quickly as possible. One of Wedge's young recruits that Han had taken a special interest because of his uncanny skills as a pilot. An instant later his name came to her._

_"Gavin!"_

_"Your Highness," he greeted as he fell to his knees beside her. _

_"I couldn't move all this." The admission burned bitterly on her tongue._

_"I don't know if I can either," Gavin admitted as he tested the weight of various pieces. "Not without something collapsing into the hole he's in."_

_The fingers in her grip slackened suddenly and a complete blackness took the place of the Force spot that had been there just a moment before_.

Han's cheek was against hers. When he pulled back to study her, her tears had left trails on his own face.

"I love you," he said simply.

Tightness squeezed her throat and she nodded and buried her face in his chest.

The next night was the same. Neither slept while Leia cleansed the pain from her soul with tears.

By the third night, Han's desires were thick enough to permeate the very air between them. Still, Leia found herself lacking her usual response to his advances.

When one finger lazily trailed from her temple to her jaw, she stirred from the blissful bit of sleep that had started to envelope her.

desire

/heat/

/love/

Passion.

She couldn't even bring herself to open her eyes.

"Do what you have to, just don't wake me."

His amusement rang clearly through the Force before a chuckle escaped him.

"One day, I'm going to take you up on that."

"Just don't wake me," she repeated.

"Deal." Han wrapped himself around her and, before she could say anything further, was asleep. His simple acceptance this night stirred something in her.

A smile settled on her lips as she studied the features of the man who wanted to spend forever with her. Life was too short to waste a moment but forever was forever.

If she had been less tired, she might have woken him and allowed him the intimacy he'd been craving for three days. The fog of her own pain was lifting enough for her to see that his comfort was more visceral than hers. Yet he'd tossed it aside to allow her her more emotional recovery.

Yes, forever was a long time to learn the proper way to love someone. Next time, she swore, next time he would come first.

And then she swore that there wouldn't be a next time. There would be no more disasters. No more death and tragedy. No more pain. No more mothers losing sons. She almost believed it.

Han whispered her name in his sleep and, at last, she slept.


End file.
